


Lomqa'

by Yeoyou



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, bonding over dissociation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 17:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18077912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeoyou/pseuds/Yeoyou
Summary: Started post 2x08 "If Memory Serves". Hugh Culber has become a ghost in new skin and his memories just data devoid of their emotional connections. The only one who can perhaps understand what he's going through is the man who killed him.





	Lomqa'

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't expect to write fic for them but here we are ...

Ash Tyler is horribly familiar with the acidic taste of guilt on this tongue; the way it burns his throat until he hardly knows how to speak anymore. How to breathe.

Guilt is a hungry demon sitting in his chest.

But anger is sitting right beside it, hissing in his veins, his ears, his head. Boiling his blood.

His whole body aches and he can’t decide whether it’s pleasure or pain. He deserves the pain, he knows that much, but whether to welcome or reject it, he hasn’t figured out yet.

But then there‘s a lot he hasn’t figured out yet. Like who he is. With the _lomqa‘_ of Voq nestling in his bones, being just Ash Tyler is an impossibility. He tried being the torchbearer, he wanted to be a father – but it all came to nothing. And so now he’s here. Now he’s confronted with different ghosts of his past, and one of those has a surprisingly effective right hook.

He should be glad that Dr. Culber is … _back_ , for lack of a better word. He probably is but he also doesn’t know how to deal with it.

So being decked by Culber in front of the whole mass hall … it’s a step, even if he can’t say in which direction yet. But it‘s something.

**

The person that used to be Dr. Hugh Culber, the ghost of a man in a new shell, storms aimlessly through corridors that seem like a labyrinth inside a cage. He can’t escape. He can’t vanish. Every corner bringing him back to where he started.

People stare but he puts out enough of a vibe that they don’t attempt to speak to him and he is glad. Because there’s a roaring in his throat. And it wants out.

It’s dripping from every one of his brand new cells, growing like cancer and ripping him apart from the inside. A constant noise in his brain, further disconnecting him from everyone.

He should feel bad about the words he yelled at Paul. He should hurt for hurting the man he used to love. But the only thing he feels is rage and frustration.

He remembers loving Paul.

He remembers living with him and being happy; and caring more about Paul Stamets than he cared about himself.

He remembers it. But he doesn’t feel it.

The data is still there, all the memories stored neatly away in his new brain but the connections to his emotions are severed.

He _knows_ he loved Paul. But he doesn’t feel it.

And lashing out had felt good. Fighting the stifling reminder of who he had been and who he was supposed to be but wasn’t. He wasn’t the man Paul Stamets had loved. And he wasn’t sure he could ever be that man again.

Because that man would not have enjoyed hurting him.

And he had. Had felt alive and swirling with emotions that belied the emptiness of his heart. It had felt good. Just as attacking Ash Tyler had felt good.

His murderer.

He remembers being killed and it should frighten him but as with everything else, the proper emotions are no longer attached to the image.

But he had felt something. Something besides the hatred and anger directed at the cause of his current status and he couldn’t quite grasp yet what that feeling had been.

He only knows that he had seen it mirrored in Ash Tyler’s dark eyes.

**

The _Discovery_ , though among the larger ships in the fleet, is a small place. Especially to share with someone that the Klingon _lomqa‘_ in your body killed not that long ago.

Ash Tyler has expected another run-in with Dr. Culber eventually. It is hard to avoid anyone in a spaceship. He hasn’t, however, imagined he would be face to face with him again quite so soon.

He can still see the broken skin over the man’s knuckles and he wonders why Culber didn’t have it treated. He can guess though.

“Are you here to hit me again?”

The words could just as well have been _Are you here to kill me_.

It doesn’t really make a difference.

Culber shrugs. There’s the same emptiness in his eyes that greets Ash every time he looks in the mirror.

He avoids mirrors as much as he can these days. But he can’t avoid this one.

“Come in.”

He steps away from the door, inviting Culber, his victim, the man he _killed_ , inside.

Only it hadn’t been him, had it?

Only it doesn’t make a difference, does it?

Drawn by something, Culber enters the small quarters Ash has been given. Looks around as if he could find anything here, any indication of who the man living here is. His lips stretch into an almost imperceptible smirk before the expression is wiped clean again.

“Do you remember it?”

There’s no accusation in the doctor’s voice, not yet maybe, only mild curiosity.

Ash fights to say something but all the words cling to the sides of his throat, not daring to leave him. When Culber clarifies, he wishes he’d spoken.

“Do you remember killing me?”

Since he doesn’t have any apologies to give, he can only offer truth.

“Yes.”

There’s a frown and when Culber swallows, Ash Tyler cannot look away from the neck he has snapped. Even though it’s not the same.

“I’m sorry,” he says and knows it’s not enough. That nothing will ever be enough.

Silence stretches lazily between them, taints the shadows with pain and guilt and awkwardness. It drives Ash mad.

He is good at war, waiting for his opponent’s next move, strategising, revising, planning. But there’s no strategy for this and patience is just a word with no meaning when all your bones are boiling, shuddering at the silent memory of another’s body.

Dr. Culber cocks his head to the side. “I left Paul.”

“I’m … sorry to hear that.”

“I should be sorry about it, shouldn’t I?” The doctor’s hands clench into fists by his side. Unclench. “But I just feel nothing.”

And now he looks at Ash and there’s desperation hidden in the depths of his words, of his eyes and Ash Tyler understands why he’s come to him.

Ghost to ghost.

He lightly tugs at Culber’s sleeve and steers him to one of the bunk beds. Sits down on the other. The impersonal emptiness of the cabin echoing in their souls.

“It felt good to hurt me though, didn’t it?” It’s almost as much statement as question because Ash is pretty sure of the answer.

As expected, Culber nods.

“Did it feel good to hurt Stamets?”

Culber hesitates. And nods again.

Ash wrings his hands, tries to get some warmth into cold human flesh.

He hadn’t been very familiar with Hugh Culber, before, but the doctor was well known to be a gentle and caring soul, and every idiot could see how much he loved his husband.

That man was not sitting across from him.

“Dr. Culber,” Ash starts but there’s a sudden flash of anger in the other man’s eyes, an intensity written into every line of his body.

“Don’t call me that.”

Ash swallows. He doesn’t like the odds of a fight in these close quarters. He’s not even sure who would win. He has experience but Culber has fury and no regard for his personal safety on his side.

“What should I call you?”

The man across from him turns his head away, staring into nothing. All fury gone.

“I don’t know.”

Silence once again purrs around their legs.

**

“ _Lomqa’_ ,” Ash Tyler mutters and the man Voq murdered wearing the skin of Ash Tyler shudders at the guttural Klingon.

But he’s intrigued as well. He’s not sure he was meant to hear it but he has.

“What does it mean?”

Tyler smiles. Or maybe winces. Probably both.

“Ghost.”

And the man formerly known as Hugh Culber throws his head back and laughs. Because the man who killed him, the man whose soul is as hollowed out as his own, is the only one who understands.

That they’re just walking ghosts in a life that is no longer meant to be theirs.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll love you forever if you leave a nice comment ;D  
> -  
> I wanted to write more of this story but the muse is currently AWOL (as of July 2019) so it might not happen at all or much later unless I suddenly find time and inspiration (*cough* comments help with the latter *cough*). But since I'm known for suddenly adding stuff to stories years later, perhaps consider a Subscribe if you liked it so far.


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